What Harriet Sherwood won't report: Hamas bans Palestinian merit scholars from leaving Gaza

As there’s really no way to blame Israel, you won’t see this story reported by the Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Harriet Sherwood.

According to the JTA:

Hamas has barred a group of Palestinian teenagers awarded scholarships to study in the United States from leaving Gaza. The eight students, aged 15-17, were chosen for merit scholarships to study in America for a year. The Hamas minister of education denied their request to leave the country for “social and cultural reasons.” [emphasis mine]

Now, really, do I even have to ask how the story would be covered by the Guardian – and the rest of the MSM – if Israel had barred Palestinian merit scholars from leaving the country to go to the U.S.?

The one common denominator which all repressive totalitarian regimes share, be they secular or religious, is a fear that their citizens will be exposed to the precious light of democracy, freedom, opportunity, and pluralism, and begin to question the logic of tyranny.

The democratic values of the routinely maligned United States represent the antithesis of everything that repressive Islamist movements such as Hamas stand for – an undeniable political and moral reality which the Guardian Left is loath to acknowledge.